Monsters Don't Have Happy Endings
by Lady Kyree
Summary: Sitting in a cold prison, Azula gets a harsh reflection of what her life has truly been. Oneshot.


_Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender, or any of its characters._

**Authors Note**: Okay, so I wrote this after seeing the finale of Avatar. One of the things that got to me the most was Azula's complete fall into madness. I used to hate Azula, but after seeing her breakdown I realized that as cruel and inhuman as she seems, she _is_ a human being and has her limits. So this is set after the finale sometime. Bear in mind I wrote this at like 2 in the morning, so... :P

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_You, Azula, are going to be great someday. The Fire Nation will bow before you, for you are a true prodigy...you by far best your brother, Zuko. Yes, it is you who will take the throne, I am sure..._

Her hand twitched, clutching tightly on to the metal bar. She glared bitterly into the darkness, her black hair falling over her now pale, gaunt face.

_I trust you and only you with my nation now, Azula. _

Her grip on the bar tightened, her knuckles turning white.

_What is wrong with that child?_

_Monster..._

_Monster..._

Monster.

She blinked. She was a monster. She had known this almost all her life. And she had accepted it, used it to her advantage; monsters were feared by all. Monsters got what they want, by being what they were.

Unloving, power hungry creatures, not afraid to destroy anything and anyone who may be in their path.

Monster. Azula was a monster.

_You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you._

"No, YOU miscalculated!" she shrieked, repeating the conversation that had occured when she had confronted Mai about her betrayal. "Traitor! TRAITOR! FILTHY TRAITORS, BOTH OF YOU!"

She growled, grounding her teeth together. She pointed two fingers at a wall, meaning to bend fire to let out some of her quickly-building frustration, then cursed loudly when no fire was produced, reminding her once more that the Avatar had forever taken away her bending.

Curse the Avatar, she thought bitterly, snapping her teeth. Curse him, curse Zuko, curse Mai and Ty Lee and her mother and the water tribe girl and every other_ moron _who had brought her down!

She let out an animal like growl and and snatched a piece of her now greasy, tangled hair. She attempted to run her fingers through it as she used to when it was clean and perfectly cut, but now her hand caught many tangles and snarles. She yanked at it roughly, curling her lip in disgust at the knowledge that she currently looked like a horrid mess, certainly no longer recognizable as Princess Azula.

You see, Azula was once beautiful. Azula was once graceful. Azula was once skilled, clever, honoured, favored, a prodigy; she was once perfect.

And she was... only a girl. A young girl of fifteen, twisted, manipulated by her father since an early age. A girl who mercilessly trained her body every day until she collapsed of exhaustion, creating her petite form into a dangerous killing machine. A girl, all her life unknowingly being used as a tool, all the while thinking the favoring from her father was out of love.

No, Ozai had reasons for favoring her, none of them included love. He was not capable of loving anyone but himself. He, also, was a monster.

Because monsters were feared, monsters got what they wanted...

Her eyes widened and her breath quickened, and she threw her head against the bars of her cage, letting out an ear shattering scream as she finally realized; she had nothing. Her years of cruelty, of manipulative power over people and their fear, her being highly favored over her elder brother, her carefully thought out plans and deceptions all added to a bitterly hollow _nothing_, nothing except her sitting in this cold dark cell where she would live out the rest of her once promising life, all her potential wasting away into a shell of a princess...

And, even in those days where Azula had everything... she'd really had nothing, hadn't she?

She'd had nothing, because her entire life was one large, well convincing lie. And _this_ particular lie was one she had also fallen victim to believing.

She told herself people respected her because of her perfection. She told herself Mai and Ty Lee were her friends because they were obviously in _awe_ of her perfection. She told herself that she really was loved by her father, and she was so confident in herself and her abilities and so called 'perfection', she truly believed she and she only could conquer anything in the world.

But, no. People respected her out of fear. Mai and Ty Lee did as she asked out of _fear_. She herself had pushed everyone away, keeping them all at a distance out of her _own_ fear; fear of falling under the false illusion of trust and love. Fear of self defeat, of failure, of things not going her way, of vulnerability. Fear of imperfection...

For Azula, in reality, was far from perfect. And she knew this once long ago, but lied to herself until she, like everyone else, believed she was perfect.

Azula never truly had her father, never had Zuko, never had Ty Lee or Mai...

And, her mother...

Her own mother was the only one, besides Azula herself, that knew of Azula's imperfection. And yet, her mother was the only person who had ever told Azula she was loved.

Love? She laughed at the thought, a hysterical and high pitched sound. Love was a stupid thing, for fools. It only made you weak. She didn't need anyone's love, not Ozai's, not Zuko's, not Ursa's...

Warm, wet tears slid down her face as she began to wail and cry like an angry child. Still sitting on her knees, she fell to her back, the chains pulling uncomfortably at her wrists. She screamed into the musky cell air at the unfairness of it all, choking on her loud sobs.

She remembered as a child, how she watched her father with wide eyes, still innocent and so naive. She molded herself into what he wanted her to be, while her mother looked on with wary eyes. Ever since she had become old enough to be trained in firebending by her father, her mother and brother and even her uncle all looked at her differently.

For the more she trained with Ozai, the more child-like innocence she had previously possesed dissappeared. She became deceptive, she learned discipline and control. "You'll need to learn the art of deception," her father had told her one say when she was about five years old. "Learn to lie convincingly, learn to take people's fears and use them against them. Fear is your greatest ally. Learn to be in control of the situation at all times." And so she did.

For fifteen years she had kept her calm, poised exterior. For fifteen years, everything she did was to please her father and better herself next to Zuko.

And it took fifteen years for her to finally crack under it all. Her only friends' betrayel led her into a paranoia in which her fears and flaws became evident to everyone around her, causing her father to leave her behind. He probably knew she was slipping...

Her desperate, insane sobs turned into furious screams.

She screamed, because her failure outcast brother had defeated _her_, favored princess of the Fire Nation.

She screamed, because she had let herself be lowered down to a level where a novice water tribe _peasant _could defeat the infamously skilled princess in battle.

She screamed because her father, the one person she had left after losing Mai and Ty Lee, had abandoned her at the first signs of her breakdown.

She screamed, because the cell she was currently sitting in, the ragged clothes she wore, the chains securely around her wrists were all evidence that her entire life had been a waste. Everything she had trained for, every moment she had spent grooming herself to be the next Fire Lord were all a complete, utter _waste_.

She screamed because she knew she was once untouchable, unstoppable, an unmoveable force, now reduced to a crying screaming mess resembling a small child throwing a tantrum.

Her screams suddenly stopped. She breathed heavily and unevenly, and she pushed herself back up into a sitting position. She licked her dry lips and rested her head against the cold metal bar of her cage, golden eyes staring unseeingly at the far wall.

Her entire realization of what her life really was had hit her harshly, had stunned her. Instead of her life leading to that of one filled with the power and control she so hungrily desired and fantasized about as a child...

It lead to nothing.

A bitter, hollow nothing.

At an age where most young people were only preparing for their lives to truly begin, her story had come to an end.

She would survive long years in this cage, but she would not live them. All because her father raised her not as a human being, but as a tool. All because of the lies she had fed everyone, including herself.

_Monster._

She blinked hazily, once... twice...

Her hands shot up and grabbed at the bars of her cell. She pulled herself up slowly, her breathing becoming more shallow by the second, her eyes becoming glazed over.

For hours she sat there, gazing into nothing, what was left of her mind contemplating over everything she had just brought herself to realize.

Then, finally, Azula let go of her grip on the cage, her hands shaking. She stared at them for a few moments, then dragged herself to the darkest corner of the cell, her chains scraping the floor as they followed along with her. She lay down and curled up in a ball, golden eyes still staring off into the distance.

You see, Azula's mind had started to crack at her two friends' sudden betrayal towards her, for this was one of her fears; things not going her way. It continued to break apart as Ozai had left the responsibility of the entire Fire Nation on her shoulders, which faced her with her fear of failure. She was slipping, a paranoia of not trusting anyone and the stress of running a nation drove her to banish all her servants and masters... and being defeated in the Agni Kai with Zuko had certainly not helped her mental state.

But what _finally _pushed the girl over the edge, was realizing what her life had truly been. Realizing all her hopes, her dreams of one day obtaining the power she so desired, were gone, were never to be reached. Realizing that when the time had come, she had failed.

All because the very thing she controlled people with was what started her descent into madness; fear, her supposed "greatest ally". Realizing that her fathers so called love was never really there; it was an imagined thing.

Monsters never had happy endings, did they? In the endings of stories, the monster was always destroyed.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the tale of a highly adored princess whose once promising future was suddenly diminished, like a once brightley burning fire is stomped out. It's the story of a skilled prodigy, who realized that the cruelty and manipulation she had used to control people was the reason she was so very alone in the world.

But above all, it's the tragic tale of a fifteen year old girl, whose mind was so corrupted and disturbed at such a young age that she eventually lost it completely. A girl who secretly craved something she had long forgotten how to do, something she no longer had even the slightest hope she would ever recieve; love.

This is the story of Azula, daughter of Ozai and Ursa, sister of Zuko, granddaughter of Azulon and Illah. Princess of the Fire Nation.

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**Authors Note**: Okay, please don't be too hard on me, this is my first fanfic. Constructive criticism is more than welcome, and no flaming...reviews pretty please?


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